Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson -
Man
Quotes
497 Sourced Quotes
View all Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Source
Report...
It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
There is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us,--kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron show,--the rootsof all things are in man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Why has my motley diary no jokes? Because it is a soliloquy and every man is grave alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
A garden has this advantage, that it makes it indifferent where you live. A well-laid garden makes the face of the country of no account; let that be low or high, grand or mean, you have made a beautiful abode worthy of man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Science in England, in America, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love and moral purpose. There's revenge for this humanity.What manner of man does science make? The boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to be such a kind of man as my professor is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Man begins life helpless. The babe is in paroxysms of fear the moment its nurse leaves it alone, and it comes so slowly to any power of self-protection that mothers say the salvation of the life and health of a young child is a perpetual miracle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Beside all the moral benefit which we may expect from the farmer's profession, when a man enters it considerately, this promised the conquering of the soil, plenty, and beyond this, the adorning of the country with every advantage and ornament which labor, ingenuity, and affection for a man's home, could suggest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
How shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or mother's life?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and self-poise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easilyborn; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source
Report...
There is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1
...
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
...
20
Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creative Commons
Born:
May 25, 1803
Died:
April 27, 1882
(aged 78)
More about Ralph Waldo Emerson...
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes